Claire Danes (“Temple Grandin”), Damian Lewis (“Band of Brothers”) and Morena Baccarin (“V”) star in “Homeland,” a 13-week drama about terrorism beginning Oct. 2 on Showtime. The central focus is a U.S. soldier who might have been turned by the enemy.

“I have not read a movie script this good in years,” Danes said. “There are a lot of essays to write about why television is such a fertile area for drama right now” as opposed to feature films, she said. She watches TV “in bulk,” she said, “the way I read a novel. (Meaning on DVDs, for big chunks of time.) A heavily serialized drama like this is perfect for that kind of marathon viewing.

“Movies can’t offer the breadth and scope that a series can,” executive producer Alex Gansa agreed.

The collision of the war on terror, the two current wars, and the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 set the real-world scene for such a series about “the price to this country,” said co-exec producer Howard Gordon (“24″).

Lewis plays the returning soldier, Danes plays a CIA agent, Baccarin plays the soldier’s wife.
“I’ve been hung upside down, beaten in the head with barbed wire wrapped around a stick…We’re keeping it close to real,” Lewis said of his torture scenes. The story is the cat and mouse game between Danes’ and Lewis’ characters.

“I’m just excited to be playing a human being,” said Baccarin, the leading alien on “V.”

Just a little constructive criticism here, when writing about military personnel, fiction or non-fiction, you shouldn’t refer to Marines as soldiers. I am a former U.S. Marine and it’s offensive to Marines to be called a “soldier”– the Army has soldiers, the Marine Corps has Marines!

Article printed from Ostrow Off The Record: http://blogs.denverpost.com/ostrow